UPDATE: jonolan points out that I read this one wrong. The joke is that the letters behind Carney spell ‘white washing…” and that, indeed, is funny. The site it came from features regular racist slurs and that influenced how I interpreted it at first.

“I think it’s a constitutional violation” and “We’ve never had a president with that level of audacity and that level of contempt for his own oath of office.”

House Speaker John Boehner:

“There’s a Constitution that we all take an oath to, including him!”

And then, of course, there’s this:

Rep. Steve Stockman (R-Texas) said Tuesday night he left President Obama’s State of the Union speech early after “hearing how the president is further abusing his Constitutional powers.”

“I could not bear to watch as he continued to cross the clearly-defined boundaries of the Constitutional separation of powers,” Stockman said in a press release shortly after Obama’s speech ended. “Needless to say, I am deeply disappointed in the tone and content of tonight’s address.”

Stockman said Obama was promising to “break his oath of office and begin enacting his own brand of law through executive decree.”

I’m listening to an Obama press conference. It’s been going on for a while and he’s answering a lot of questions.

He sounds like the man who ran for office in ’08. Clear, detailed answers. Solid explanations of how the economy works – at home and around the world. Utterly different from the usual sputtering defensive stance.

If the American people heard more like this, we’d be in a whole different place.

ETA: Presser concluded. From this day forward, October 8th shall be known as National Pony Day in honor of President Obama’s stellar performance. Well, I’ll observe NPD, anyway. It was a tonic for any liberal who longed to see the Tea Party loons get kicked in the junk repeatedly. I’ll post a video and transcript when I can find one.

How else to explain this kind of thinking – some in the Administration have put out this projection for Obama’s presidency going forward. They draw it as an entirely passive future. They’re saying if we fail at this, we’ll fail at everything else because it’ll be out of our hands. Perhaps some staffers think saying this would be heard by the Congress as a threat; they would be wrong – a weak Obama is the opposition’s wet dream.

ST. PETERSBURG, Russia — President Obama and his advisers view the coming decision on military action against Syria as a potential turning point that could effectively define his foreign policy for his final three years in office. . . .

Mr. Obama and his team see the votes as a guidepost for the rest of his presidency well beyond the immediate question of launching missiles at Syrian military targets. If Congress does not support a relatively modest action in response to a chemical attack that killed more than 1,400 people in Syria, Obama advisers said, the president will not be able to count on support for virtually any use of force.

Although Mr. Obama has asserted that he has the authority to order the strike on Syria even if Congress says no, White House aides consider that almost unthinkable. As a practical matter, it would leave him more isolated than ever and seemingly in defiance of the public’s will at home. As a political matter, it would almost surely set off an effort in the House to impeach him, which even if it went nowhere could be distracting and draining.

As a result, Mr. Obama would be even more reluctant to order action in the one case that has most preoccupied military planners: the development of a nuclear bomb by Iran.

I hate that we might do anything military at all in Syria. I hate that if we do, it could be because President Barry was a little careless with his language last year with “a red line”, and the year before with “Assad has to go”. (Hey, maybe he should go to Congress and let them say ‘no’ and then either he can have it both ways or if they say ‘yes’ he’s got cover and isn’t in this alone.)

But I’m also cynical. More cynical than a sweet woman like myself ought to be. So I will wonder: is this waffling and the promises of ‘limited strikes’ a ruse? Is it a delay so Assad can act now to mitigate the damage to come?

Do we perhaps want Assad to survive after all because we believe anything that follows would be more unstable? Have we made a quiet deal to buy some time to transition to another government without those Islamists rattling the palace gates?

UPDATE: He is going to Congress – just saw it at The New York Times; it must have been a few hours ago, so I’m guessing it’s not because of my post.

Just got to watch Obama’s press conference from this afternoon. I’ve watched a few of these and I think this was better than the others. With one exception, his answers were crisp and confident. I liked how he dealt with the gotcha type questions from the likes of Chuck Todd and Ed Henry; he didn’t take the bait. So pretty good.

In a USA Today column, the Ayn Rand acolyte says that Obama is “interested in tax reform for corporations, not for families or small business,” adding “the President claims his economic agenda is for the middle class, but it’s actually for the well-connected.”

He said that. Really.

I learned this from Dana Milbank who, in his column this morning, sees other Republicans picking up on that meme.

To further illustrate that they can say pretty much anything and be taken seriously, there’s this:

John Boehner, asked at a news conference this week about Obama’s series of speeches on the economy, replied: “If I had poll numbers as low as his, I’d probably be out doing the same thing if I were him.”

Obama’s that rare socialist who is in bed with big business . . . Republicans haven’t decided whether Obama’s a socialist or a plutocrat, a tyrant or a weakling, arrogant or apologetic.

* I probably don’t have to add this, but it’s irresistible. A year ago (and probably last week as well) Ryan accused Obama of supporting “a government-run economy” and of ‘denigrating people who are successful”. He charged the president with leading the nation toward a “cradle-to-grave, European style welfare state.”

Obama has been regurgitating the same phony talking points since then, insisting the economy is improving but stirring the class-warfare pot claiming the middle class and poor are not keeping pace. Naturally, he suggests the solution is more taxes and government spending.

Every now and again, a tired and predictable outrage erupts over the cost of Bush’s! Obama’s! or (fill in the blank) _____’s travel. We heard one a few weeks ago when the President went! to! Africa!

The rants are usually accompanied by charges that the President is getting all tyrannical and acting like a king plus no other President has been so respectful of hard-working tax-paying Americans, so extravagant (especially if the President being so characterized is of anther political party).

And they’re right. President protection has reached preposterous levels. As for the effectiveness of the web of security we’ve constructed, look no further than Reagan – shot from just a few yards away while surrounded by Secret Service.

From the time of the Kennedy assassination, the retinue – from the epic productions that are foreign travel, to the limo known as “The Beast” and the ambulances that accompany every POTUS motorcade – has grown like a cancer.

The President needs to stop this and find a way out. But he isn’t. He’s defending it. The inhumanity of force-feeding political prisoners plays out in the wider world just like Abu-Ghraib. But this time, it’s my guy doing it. Shame, shame, shame.

MIAMI, July 3 (Reuters) – The U.S. federal court has no jurisdiction and no legal basis to intervene in the force-feeding of prisoners at the Guantanamo naval base, the Obama administration argued in a court document on Wednesday

Oh the ugly . . . anger spreads today across the land because the First Family spent lottsa taxpayer money staying in Ireland. And the First Lady is bad. Bad, bad, bad . . . here are the first six comments from a post at something called reagancoalition.* (The story began at the Moonie-owned, barely subscribed financial failure The Washington Times, and then went to Newsmax where this coalition-of-racists picked it up.)

So she’s a low class n—ger with a big black butt whose kids hate her. Obviously. But it’s sooo classy to make fun of the kids (later comments savage them). I remember Limbaugh going after then 12 year old Chelsea Clinton and making fun of her looks. That was classy too.

An aside: the Obamas made a State visit the UK in ’10; Bush did the same in ’03. In 2011, the BBC compared costs and other aspects of the visits. It’s here and is very interesting. Note that Bush brought 700 people with him; Obama brought 500. Pretty much this is what happens when a President of the United States goes calling.

*(Stipulated: 1) this looks like a wing site, and 2) I remember the Bush/monkey stuff but he was the president and she isn’t.)

I gave the original of this picture of my great grandfather to that cousin. It’s a precious one as he is reading the very first edition of The Saturday Evening Post, in 1887.

Anyway, the story that occasions this post popped up on my timeline on Facebook as a ‘share’ from a second cousin. When I first went onto Facebook, I was delighted to find relatives I hadn’t communicated with in decades and we began some lovely getting re-acquainted dialogue. I even joined this cousin’s sister in a genealogy project which we conducted via email. It was a great deal of fun and very rewarding. She was deeply interested in family history – unlike my own nieces and nephews – so I sent her many heirlooms from my own great-grandparents, grandparents etc; it was mostly original photos, letters, even some wedding veils . . . it was a wonderful year or two for both of us.

Until last year. That’s when I began streaming this blog onto my facebook page. The communications died, emails were only answered in the most cursory way and eventually not at all. I had all along been quite familiar with these women’s politics and knew we were very different that way. But that wasn’t the sort of thing what we talked about, so it didn’t matter. Or so I thought.

I’m skimming Bob Woodward’s book on the Obama Administration – The Price of Politics. I’ve read his books for years. They’re dry recitations of his reporting, utterly passionless and very readable.

In the last few years though, he’s begun to sound a bit like the ‘get off my lawn’ guy (encroaching on traditional McCain territory!). Still, he writes a good book. So I sat down and I began.

By page 20, Woodward is giving credence to a complaint uttered by Eric Cantor after the vote on HR1, the first bill of that congress, Obama’s stimulus package. Cantor had whipped the congressional Republicans so effectively that not a single one of them voted for the bill. Not one.

Woodward:

What. . . surprised Cantor was how badly the White House had played what should have been a winning hand. Though Obama won the vote, he had unified and energized the losers (really? he was the one that did it?). . . . he had actually pushed them away . . . there had been no sincere contact, no inclusiveness, no real listening.

The vote, and Cantor’s complaint, came on January 28, 2009, eight days after Obama was inaugurated. A period during which Obama had met three times with the House leadership – including Cantor.

Charles Pierce at Esquiretells us today that Wall Street Journal columnist and TV pundit, Peggy of the Noonans, thinks Obama was rude to Dubayew Thursday down at that library opening. She scolds:

He veered into current policy disputes, using Mr. Bush’s failed comprehensive immigration reform to buttress his own effort. That was manipulative, graceless and typical.

Here’s what the fake President said, what Noonan described as ‘graceless’:

Seven years ago, President Bush restarted an important conversation by speaking with the American people about our history as a nation of laws and a nation of immigrants. And even though comprehensive immigration reform has taken a little longer than any of us expected, I am hopeful that this year, with the help of Speaker Boehner and some of the senators and members of Congress who are here today, that we bring it home – for our families, and our economy, and our security, and for this incredible country that we love. And if we do that, it will be in large part thanks to the hard work of President George W. Bush.

And there was this:

Back to the point. What was nice was that all of them-the Bush family, the Carters and Clintons-seemed like the old days. “The way we were.” They were full of endurance, stamina, effort. Also flaws, frailty, mess. But they weren’t . . . creepy.

PIERCE: Back when the Clintons actually were in the White House, Peggy Noonan called the First Lady at the time, among other things, “a highly credentialed rube,” a “person who never ponders what is right,” and “a squat and grasping woman.” But not creepy, not like the current First Family.

(Psst, Peg doesn’t like the Kenyan much. And as she’s speaking here in family plurals – FLOTUS and the daughters? Also creepy. )

Maureen Dowd, who often makes my teeth hurt as much as Wolfe Blitzer, gets it exactly right today. The gun purchase background check legislation should have passed the Senate and could have passed the Senate, if it had just a little push from the Oval Office.

How is it that the president won the argument on gun safety with the public and lost the vote in the Senate? It’s because he doesn’t know how to work the system . . . It’s unbelievable that with 90 percent of Americans on his side, he could get only 54 votes in the Senate. It was a glaring example of his weakness in using leverage to get what he wants. No one on Capitol Hill is scared of him . . .

President Obama thinks he can use emotion to bring pressure on Congress. But that’s not how adults with power respond to things. . . .

The president was oblivious to red-state Democrats facing tough elections. Bring the Alaskan Democrat Mark Begich to the White House residence, hand him a drink, and say, “How can we make this a bill you can vote for and defend?”

Sometimes you must leave the high road and fetch your brass knuckles. Obama should have called Senator Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota over to the Oval Office and put on the squeeze: “Heidi, you’re brand new and you’re going to have a long career. You work with us, we’ll work with you. Public opinion is moving fast on this issue. The reason you get a six-year term is so you can have the guts to make tough votes. This is a totally defensible bill back home . . . ”

. . . Obama should have pressed his buddy [Sen Tom Coburn]: “Hey, Tom, just this once, why don’t you do more than just talk about making an agreement with the Democrats? You’re not running again. Do something big.”

This is where Obama fails. He needs to remind himself that he is “the most powerful man in the world” and then he needs to get his hands dirty.

It seems Obama recently said “Up at Camp David, we do skeet shooting all the time,” when he was asked if he’d ever fired a gun.

Oh yeah? A statement like that calls for serious congressional attention because it’s an important matter and we can’t just take the word of the President of the United States. Because it’s too important.

Today, Americans celebrate the inauguration of our 45th president and 224 years of continuity of government – 224 year of bloodless constitutional transitions.

But not all Americans are happy.

According to Forbes, golfer Phil Mickelson may give up his career because he may have to pay higher taxes.

For starters, courtesy of President Obama’s re-election and the subsequent fiscal cliff negotiations, Mickelson will experience an increase in his top tax rate on ordinary income from 35% to 39.6%, and an increase in his top rate on long-term capital gains and qualified dividends from 15% to 20%. Clearly, when faced with tax hikes of that magnitude, it stops making economic sense for Mickelson to continue to swing a metal stick up to 70 times a day in exchange for the $48 million he earns on an annual basis.

Let’s repeat that last sentence:

Clearly, when faced with tax hikes of that magnitude, it stops making economic sense for Mickelson to continue to swing a metal stick up to 70 times a day in exchange for the $48 million he earns on an annual basis.

Either that is tongue-in-cheek or this is the most spoiled brat in sports.

. . . and don’t people go to jail when they commit crimes? Well, they don’t when the head of the Federal justice system is Eric Holder who is NOT stepping down for the second term and who was head of Justice in the spring of this year when this was going on.

HSBC Holdings Plc (HSBA)’s head of group compliance, David Bagley, told a Senate hearing he will step down amid claims the bank gave terrorists, drug cartels and criminals access to the U.S. financial system by failing to guard against money laundering.

Bagley was among at least six HSBC executives who testified before the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations today after the panel released a 335-page report describing a decade of compliance failures by Europe’s biggest bank. London-based HSBC enabled drug lords to launder money in Mexico, did business with firms linked to terrorism and concealed transactions that bypassed U.S. sanctions against Iran, Senate investigators said in the report.

So Mr. Bagley and his buddies said they were ever so sorry before heading back to the company ‘retreat’ at Cabo and after, of course, paying a fine in an amount that they can earn back in a week.

That’ll show ’em alright.

Obama’s Cabinet has included some really terrific, skilled and well-suited people. I don’t count Holder among them. I’ll admit to being ignorant regarding many of his policies and initiatives. Maybe they’re good. Maybe they’re great. But when it comes to punishing corporate ‘persons’, those whose crimes almost brought down the world economy? FAIL..

No investment bankers are in jail. No one from AIG is in jail. Not even anyone from Countrywide. Or Arthur Anderson. Or the other rating agencies. And how about LIBOR? Any US companies complicit in that?

By any measurement, letting them off with fines is sufficient reason to judge him a failure. I suppose that only when they do it two more times will they, like the 20-year-old marijuana smoker down the street, head to the big house.

The five Senators who made up the Keating Five plus Mr. Keating (bottom right)

Anyone remember the Savings & Loan scandal in the Reagan years? It wasn’t as far-reaching as 2008, but it was pretty damn big. There were plenty of perp walks (but not for everyone, not for everyone – see below). A lot of people paid for their corporate crimes. But that’s s-o-o-o yesterday.

For you younger ones:

Savings and loan crisis in which 747 institutions failed and had to be rescued with $160 billion in taxpayer dollars.[33] Reagan’s “elimination of loopholes” in the tax code included the elimination of the “passive loss” provisions that subsidized rental housing. Because this was removed retroactively, it bankrupted many real estate developments which used this tax break as a premise, which in turn bankrupted 747 Savings and Loans, many of whom were operating, more or less, as banks, thus requiring the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to cover their debts and losses with tax payer money. This with some other “deregulation” policies, ultimately led to the largest political and financial scandal in U.S. history to that date. The savings and Loan crisis. The ultimate cost of the crisis is estimated to have totaled around USD $150 billion, about $125 billion of which was directly subsidized by the U.S. government, which further increased the large budget deficits of the early 1990s. See Keating Five.

Lincoln Savings and Loan collapsed in 1989, at a cost of over $3 billion to the federal government. Some 23,000 Lincoln bondholders were defrauded and many investors lost their life savings. The substantial political contributions Keating had made to each of the senators, totaling $1.3 million, attracted considerable public and media attention. After a lengthy investigation, the Senate Ethics Committee determined in 1991 that Cranston, DeConcini, and Riegle had substantially and improperly interfered with the FHLBB’s investigation of Lincoln Savings, with Cranston receiving a formal reprimand. Senators Glenn and McCain were cleared of having acted improperly but were criticized for having exercised “poor judgment”.

America’s topple from the fiscal cliff will be triggered by the Budget Control Act of 2011, which was sparked by the debt ceiling debate of the same year. Now, as part of the fiscal cliff negotiations, President Obama has agreed to cut Social Security by switching to something called Chained CPI to figure the amount in your Social Security check.

I checked the Social Security website trying understand the impact of the switch, and pulled a few facts. Turns out the Bureau of Labor Statistics employs several different CPI measurements:

An experimental data series, the CPI-E, to measure the “inflation experience” of those aged 62 or older

This chart from the site shows how the different CPIs measure inflation over time. Chained CPI calculations result in a lower inflation rate number:

No calculation method is (or can be) completely accurate, but seniors are more likely to experience inflation patterns closer to the CPI-E, although the CPI-E may be less accurate because the population test bed is smaller. Inflation measured by the CPI-E is higher, due to seniors’ higher medical costs, which rise faster than other costs.

Inflation measured by the C-CPI-U is lower, due to the “substitution factor” caused by rising prices on some goods. For example, if the cost of chicken goes up, one would tend to substitute some lower priced meat like bologna.* (Some politicians have suggested that because of this, your Social Security check has really been too fat all these years.)

Cost of living adjustments (COLAs – the increase one sees in one’s SS check every few years) are currently based on the CPI-U and CPI-W.

Obama proposes switching to the C-CPI-U to calculate COLAs even though seniors need more than the CPI-U and CPI-W to keep up with inflation, not less. Why the switch? No other reason than C-CPI-U will pay less over time than the current method. Assertions that C-CPI-U is more “accurate”, or it’s just a “tweak” to the calculation, or “if enacted, nobody would notice the difference”, are ludicrous. Over a long retirement, Chained CPI would result in a month’s loss of benefits yearly, or about 8.3%. That’s a hefty cut.

*If the cost of bologna rises too much, I understand Kibbles ‘n Bits Bistro Meals have been found to be quite edible.

While quite conservative, he was a good Senator, a thoughtful man. So if he ends up at Defense, that looks good to me. (I think he was also a fierce critic of W’s Iraq Adventure.) Will his former GOP colleagues confirm him?

Story is from Bloomberg. Notice the other headline too. So John Kerry gets State. I’m down with that as well.

1028 pm -Mitt says American such a prosperous nation, it’s a shame what’s happened in last four years.

1027 pm – are closing statements scheduled? We’ve got 3 minutes left.

1024 pm – Ooooh, Mitt’s feelings are hurt. Obama called him names. And again, more lying. It’s getting to Obama. Mitt is slimey smooth. Obama is frustrated and pissed. Solyndra!!! Romney is doing that condescension again. And he can overtalk anyone. The man is unbeleivable. Just unbeleivable. He just talks and talks and talks and he lies and lies and lies. Quite remarkable.

1019 pm – BUT, currency manipulator!! Day One! So now he’s listing all the bad bad things China is doing,, but, you know, not an adversary in any shape or form. Egad.

1015 pm – Obama: China adversary and potential partner. Mitt: First, government bad. “we don’t have to be an adversary in any shape or form’. I cannot beleive he just said that! Is Mitt chiding prez for not being nice enough to China?

THIS THING is a draw so far. Romney, lying little shit that he is, sounds strong. He’s been reminded of his manners, and that helps. Obama is strong and I think he’s getting a bit pissed with the lying . . .

1010 pm – Schieffer just said “obama’ for “osama’.. Nice.

1008 pm – Obama: we’re are so getting out of Afghanistan!

1004 pm – Romney talking Afghan as if he were president and listing all that he’s done and how good it is. But, Pakistan!! Some people think it doenst matter (oh, not you Mr. President). O Christ, he wants benchmarks for Pakistan. He’s going to fix Pakistan.

1003 pm – Romney tried the talk over moderator again. Scheiffer shut him down and it passed. Someone obviously had a cautionary word with Mitt before tonight

958 pm – Obama didn’t have fundraisers when he went to Israel. Romney took donors with him. So there! Ooooh, Romney says he has such a great relationshhip with Netanyahu, Israel wouldn’t do anything like bomb Iran without talking to Mitt first. They’re close. Really close.

956 pm – Romney says it’s four years later than when Obama came into office. And he hurt Israels’ feelings.

947 pm – Mitt repeating Obama’s words re Iran. He seems to think his words are original. Sanctions? Mitt called for them five years ago, so I guess that’s why we have them today. But he would of course ‘tighten’ them. Does he know Iran’s currency has crashed? He’ll launch diplomatic efforts – clever lad. He thinks Prez Ahmajinidad should be dragged before world court for genocide because of what he said? Puzzling.

946 pm – stupid Israel question. Is an attack on them an attack on us? (Does Schieffer watch the news?)

944 pm – Obama. We don’t have as many ships as whenever, true. But we also don’t have as many horses or bayonets.

940 pm – Barry on military for a minute or two. Somehow Mitt is talking again. And boy oh boy! He balanced budgets lots of them. Romney won’t cut military. Sinking down to Limbaugh type talking points about numbers of ships and planes and the sequester.

931 pm – Mitt’s been speaking for a long long time. Also, we blew it in Iran.

930 pm – Mitt loves our military and allies. And America. And guess what, we have 42 allies. Obama destroyed America! Mitt going all flag waving and bumper sticker. America must be strong. America must leave. But Obama ruined economy – no jobs, bad bad Obama, what a mess he made. Also, our military needs to be stronger. Again!

925 pm – Barry talking Egypt – Israel, women, counter terrorism – talking region, goals of peoples there. Mitt says he agreed with Obama re Egypt at time of revolution, except, see, Obama blew it cuz he didn’t see it coming and control every single second of the revolution.

920 pm – question: would you do no fly zones in Syria? Mitt – no military intervention. None. But still, Obama screwing it up. Ahhh, ‘we have to make sure they have the arms they need’. Again, pretty much exactly what we’re doing right now.

918 pm -Barry: intervening has risks and is very serious. Who is the ‘opposition’. Romney: Syria important! Israel! Seeing to replacement govt be responsible people. No war! Actually,, he’s basically rephrasing everything Obama just said. He’s talked about Isreal, Qatar, Saudi Arabia – no mention of Jordan, Lebanon or Turkey who are being pulled in right now??? Hey Mitt, what about them?